A Grievous Wolf - Time for Truth

49
White “if we make the KJV the starting point (and this is exactly what radical KJV Onlyism does) there
is simply no way of determining the correct text of Jeremiah 34:16.” He declares [in his book The King
James Only Controversy p 81] the reading “he” to be the error of “a later English stylist
[that]…somehow got past the final editing process and into print” but expresses his dismay on discovering
that the NKJV also says “he” in Jeremiah 34:16. However, after consultation with Dr James
Price of the NKJV committee, White [in The King James Only Controversy p 89] assures his readers
that “Future editions of the NKJV will change the pronoun back to “you.””
Dr Ruckman responds as follows, his emphasis.
“White is worried about the fact that the Cambridge and Oxford editions of the AV don’t match word
for word…[White] even consulted Dr James Price (on the NKJV committee…) to get back to the “original
text”…They both agreed the text should say “ye” instead of “he””…
“Both apostates (Price and White) insisted that the plural “ye” should be maintained because “he,” being
singular, was false. Whereupon they change the “ye”…to “you.” But “you” in [modern] English,
is not plural necessarily…[Greek and Hebrew] both have a plural form of “you” [but] Modern English
does not preserve this distinction…
“BOTH variants in the AV (Jer. 34:16) were correct grammatically, if one deals with the English text or
the Hebrew text. They (“ye” in the Cambridge) were being addressed as a group (plural, Jer. 34:13; as
in Deut. 29), but the address was aimed at individual men (“he” in the Oxford edition), within the
group. Either word would have been absolutely correct according to that great critic of critics, the
word of God (Heb. 4:12-13)…
“No “editor” let anything slip by. White and Price think they are careful “editors.” The translators
chose two different ways of saying the same thing, and both of them accorded with the context of the
verse, and both of them told the TRUTH. But because they weren’t identical (Cambridge “ye,” Oxford
“he”) the old self-righteous, practical atheists – no Alexandrian has any higher authority than his opinions
or the opinions of his friends – claimed “error.””
And once again, White’s claim is shown to be false. (Scrivener’s Appendix C notes that the 1611 reading
in Jeremiah 34:16 is “ye” and that the reading “he” entered the 1629, 1638 editions. God has evidently
allowed both readings to remain to the present day, as Dr Ruckman explains above.)
“He taketh the wise in their own craftiness: and the counsel of the froward is carried headlong” Job
5:13.
The above write-up on Jeremiah 34:16 contains further material with respect to James White’s attempt
to exalt his own opinion over the 1611 Holy Bible, Proverbs 26:12. That material follows and provides
the answer Grievous Wolf’s Question 49.
White refers to Dr Scrivener’s collation of changes in the various editions of the AV1611 but he fails to
mention the dates of the changes. Perhaps this is because, like the above examples [i.e. in James
White’s 7 “Errors.”], they were among the 72% of all textual variants that were finalised under the
ministry of Drs Bois and Ward by 1638. Such an early date for the resolution of almost three-quarters
of all such variants – and [according to Dr William P. Grady in Final Authority p 170] “Scrivener alludes
to less than two hundred as noteworthy of mention” – effectively cripples White’s insistence [in
The King James Only Controversy p 79] that “these changes…represent a sticky problem for the radical
proponent of KJV Onlyism…when the KJV is made the absolute standard…once a person has invested
the English translation with inspiration itself.”
Dr Grady [in Final Authority pp 227-228] also refutes White’s half-truth [The King James Only Controversy
p 78] that “Editions with changes in the text came out as soon as 1612, [others] in 1613…1616,
1629, and 1638” and his allusion to William Kilburne’s claim in 1659 that “20,000 errors had crept into
six different editions [of the AV1611] in the 1650s.” Dr Grady states.
“When all else fails, detractors of the King James Bible will invariably ask their despised opponents,
“WHICH Authorised Version do you believe, the 1611, 1613, 1767 or perhaps the 1850?” And while
their bewildered victims are pondering this troublesome innuendo (analogous to such nonsense as